Tennessee basketball: Pressure is finally off Vols after South Carolina win

Tennessee basketball’s 85-73 win over the South Carolina Gamecocks has lifted a huge burden off the Volunteers. Here’s why that was so important.

That headline alone could be a paradox. Tennessee basketball has been No. 1 for four weeks and is 22-1 and 11-0 in the SEC while enjoying a 19-game winning streak. As they are about to begin their stretch run, how could the pressure be off them?

Well, the Vols have now gotten through one major hurdle of their schedule. Yes, they have had an SEC schedule front-loaded with easy teams. The Alabama Crimson Tide are the only opponent they have faced with any hopes of making the NCAA Tournament since conference play began.

But Rick Barnes’s team survived every game. Some were tough, like the Florida Gators on the road, Alabama and the Vanderbilt Commodores on the road. But when you play 12 straight Power Five teams (including the West Virginia Mountaineers) as a top 5 team with nothing to gain and everything to lose, your worst fear is slipping up.

As they get set to head to Rupp Arena to take on the Kentucky Wildcats Saturday, Tennessee basketball can at least say it ran the table in every game it was supposed to win. In fact, the only game left that would be considered a run the table game is Vanderbilt at home. I’m going to go ahead and say that such a game, right after Kentucky, will be an easy win. Vandy is horrible.

The dangers on this team’s schedule were road games or games against teams capable of scoring an upset. Think about the Duke Blue Devils losing at home to the Syracuse Orange. Everybody was just waiting on that to happen to this No. 1 ranked team.

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However, even if they lose their No. 1 ranking, they don’t win the regular season SEC championship and they fail to beat any of the good teams left on their schedule, which is highly unlikely, they would still be at worst 12-6 in the SEC and 23-7 overall. That would also likely still bring a double-bye in the SEC Tournament.

Simply put, Tennessee basketball can play this final stretch of brutal games while having a bit of fun knowing that they never blew it against a team they weren’t supposed to. None of these losses, provided they beat Vandy, would be bad or even questionable losses.

Only the Ole Miss Rebels and Mississippi State Bulldogs would be losses worth raising an eyebrow over. But those are both good teams, and Tennessee basketball would be playing those games with as much to gain as they have to lose.

Over the last six weeks, they have been playing games with nothing to gain and everything to lose, and it’s super hard to maintain your focus when that happens. But they did it, and now they can use the stretch run of their season to find out how good they really are. But at least they can do it without some bad collapse in the back of their heads.

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